Snape's Private Lessons
by Rosajean
Summary: Hermione Granger is the new Muggle Studies Professor at Hogwarts and even before the term starts she's already driving Snape crazy.  But a brief glimpse into one of Hermione's passions may result in leading them down a road they never expected.
1. Chapter 1

Severus Snape cursed the loud racket that was disturbing his peace and quiet during the last week of summer vacation. Whoever was causing such mayhem – and he had a good idea of who it was – clearly did not have an appreciation of his well-known temper that erupted when he was disturbed during the few and rare student-free days of his life.

He ripped open the doors of his quarters and stalked down the hall in the direction the noise was coming from. Spying an open door of a seldom used classroom, he hurried through it and came to a halt at the sight before him. Just as he suspected: it was none other than the annoying and infuriating new professor of Muggle Studies, Miss Granger. She'd barely been in the castle three weeks and already they'd had a row. Apparently she took offense to his refusing to call her Hermione or Professor, insisting that to continue to refer to her as _Miss_ was belittling and insulting. Granted, it wasn't like he really cared about what he called her, but it was awfully entertaining to see her get worked up over it, so he'd refused to change it anyways.

He just knew when Minerva hired her that he would live to regret it every day. He thought surely now that she was no longer a student he wouldn't have to put up with her exasperating questions, know-it-all attitude, and insatiable curiosity, but leave it to Minerva to ensure that he'd never have a moment of peace again. And now here Granger was, ruining the last of his days of summer freedom by creating a ruckus of noise while moving some peculiar muggle artifacts. Well, to be fair, it was the house elves moving the artifacts while she was directing them. But that didn't make it any better in his opinion.

"_Miss Granger_, must you insist on ruining the last days of my summer vacation by creating a commotion so loud I'm sure they can hear you in Hogsmeade?" He inquired in his most snide voice.

Hermione whipped around to face him in surprise, a slightly abashed and yet slightly indignant look on her face. He took a brief moment to ponder how she managed to pull off both looks simultaneously, before tuning into her unnecessarily lengthy explanation.

"….for my seventh year classes. I thought it would be a great opportunity to supply a hands-on approach to learning about various aspects of muggle culture. Unfortunately, one of the house elves accidentally dropped the kiln they were levitating and so of course it created quite a loud noise and I had to repair it, but I think it still should work as good as new, don't you? I mean, I don't see why Reparo shouldn't work on a muggle object just as well as a wizarding one, right? But then, Professor Flitwick – that is to say, Filius – didn't really cover using that spell on muggle electric-based items in any of the seven years I was in his class so I'm really not sure; perhaps I should head to the library to research it. Though at this point, the damage _has_ already been done and repaired, so if there's an issue with it, I'll find out soon enough as it were. But really, don't you think –"

Snape briefly considered casting a silencing spell on the witch just to shut her up, but thought it might be considered bad form to attack the newest member of faculty, even if she _was_ being particularly annoying. "Enough already! Reparo works just as well on muggle artifacts as it does on magical ones." He was only supplying the information because he wanted her to quit talking – _not_ because he was trying to be nice. Surely she would understand that. But just to be sure, he added with a sneer, "Obviously, however, your efforts are wasted. Have you suddenly forgotten that objects requiring electricity in the muggle world will not work here at Hogwarts? Surely the class know-it-all would know _that_?"

But instead of cowering at his tone or starting another (highly entertaining) argument with him, the silly chit had the audacity to roll her eyes at him. He must be losing his touch – perhaps the lack of students to practice on over the summer had left him rusty in the intimidation department.

"Of course I know that, Severus. Even first years know that! Luckily, however, Minerva and Flitwick both aided me in charming this room to let electrical objects work in here. Granted, it took a fair few days, but between the three of us we managed."

Unable to think of something sarcastic to respond, Severus chose to ignore the comment and instead moved to inspect the objects that the elves had finally finished moving. Half-blood though he was, he had little idea of what he was looking at – though he recalled the mention of something called a 'kiln' in Granger's rambling explanation earlier.

"What is all this? Nothing dangerous I should hope. Those dunderheads you call students will undoubtedly blow themselves up with all this unfamiliar equipment."

Hermione barely managed to stifle her laughter, in case he thought she was laughing at him and took offense – though really it was kind of funny imagining her students trying to blow themselves up with the five pottery wheels, the kiln, the slab roller, the extruder, and the many bags of clay she had in the room. Nope, definitely not dangerous – though granted, if you did have wet hands when you went to plug in the paddle to motorize the wheel you might get a nasty shock.

"Here, let me show you." She moved to pull a green apron off a hook on the wall, quickly pulling it over her head, tying the strings in back. She dismissed the few house elves with her thanks for their help as she moved over to a nearby table, waving Severus over so he could watch. "This is the wedging table. It's made of plaster because plaster absorbs moisture really well, which is really useful when working with clay. But you have to be careful not to get any of the plaster in the clay or it can mess up your piece when you go to fire it. Normally, I'd have to wedge the clay to remove any air bubbles from it, but the blocks of clay that I purchased have already had all the air removed from them, so we won't have to wedge it until we're reusing the leftover scraps." Snape pretended to know what she was talking about, nodding along as he watched her pull gray clay from a bag and use a wire to cut a block off of it. She set the block on a scale, measuring out two pounds, before taking the clay and smacking it into a ball shape with her hands.

Intrigued, though not really willing to admit it, he watched in silence as she filled a small bucket of water using an _Aguamenti _charm and then gathered a few tools and a small sponge before heading for the closest pottery wheel. She pulled a round piece of wood thing (he had no idea what to call that) out of a nearby cabinet and placed it over the metal wheel head, before plugging in the paddle for the wheel and taking a seat on a stool, scooting up close to the wheel.

"First, after you've got everything ready, you have to wet the wheel. So you just take the sponge, dip it in the water and press on the paddle to make the wheel turn while holding the sponge to it. If you use too much water, the clay won't stick and it will slide around when you begin to center it, so it just needs to be a bit damp, okay?"

He nodded his head, and then pulled up another stool so he could observe everything she was doing. Fleetingly, he wondered where she'd learned to do this, considering how comfortable and knowledgeable she seemed to be with the equipment.

"Next, you slam the clay down in the center of the wheel. Try to get it in the middle, it'll make easier for you when you're centering it." A resounding smack echoed through the large room as she slapped the clay down on the wheel. "It's important to have your hands wet when working with clay, it makes it a lot easier to mold, and you have to rewet them often throughout the process." She dipped her hands in the bucket of water, and then started the wheel spinning at a moderately fast speed. "You should brace your elbows on your thighs, it'll make it easier to keep your hands steady while working with the clay. First, you have to center the clay before you can start molding it." She showed him the proper placing of the hands to center it, and how to apply force to the side and top to get it where you need it to be. He was simultaneously fascinated and off-put by how mucked up her hands were getting, and the fact that she didn't seem bothered by it at all. He never would've guessed her to be the type to willingly get her hands dirty. But then again, she _is_ muggle born and he supposed there had to be something to living the muggle way for the first eleven years of her life.

He watched as she slowed the speed of the wheel and then pressed a thumb down in the middle of the clay, opening it up. "Opening up the clay is the most disruptive thing you'll do to it in the whole process, so it's often easier to do it gradually, making sure the whole time that you're applying even pressure with your hands so that all sides of the clay end up even. After it's opened up, you can start bringing up the sides and molding it into something. When you're first starting out, it can be hard to make anything larger or more complex than a bowl, but you can also do coffee mugs and other such objects, before moving onto things like vases and pots."

He watched as the clay moved fluidly through her hands, the skill and experience evident as a vase started taking shape right before his eyes. "Once you get the initial shape formed, you can add designs to it later, and then once it dries you can trim it and glaze it – paint it –" she clarified at his confused look, "before putting it in the kiln to be fired." She nodded her head in the direction of the large round thing sitting in the corner of the room that he assumed was this 'kiln' she talked about. Though why you would want to set something on fire that you had just made was beyond him.

Snape found himself torn between watching her hands as she molded the clay and watching the passion for and intense focus on what she was creating play out over her face. It seemed like she was willingly letting him glimpse a side of her that she didn't normally show, and he had to wonder just why she would do that. It's not like he'd ever been particularly nice to her, especially since becoming his colleague, so why did he get the feeling that she was sharing something special with him?

Eventually, she stopped the wheel from spinning, and grabbing a wire, stretched it tightly between her hands and pulled it across the wheel head to sever the bottom of the vase from the wood it was formed on. Then she lifted up the wooden circle and moved the entire piece to a nearby table to let dry on. What he didn't expect, was for her to turn to him with a smirk, stating, "Now it's your turn. Let's see how well you take instruction, _Professor._" Somehow, that '_Professor'_ sounded more like a challenge than a title of respect.

TBC...

**Oh, and just let me say here and now: Even if I could afford a plane ticket to London, find a witch or wizard to take me to Ollivander's shop in Diagon Alley, convince him to sell a wand to a muggle, travel to the Forbidden Forest, Accio the Resurrection Stone, use it to bring back Snape, and Imperius him into making Polyjuice Potion for me – **_**even then**_**, I doubt I could ever get close enough to JK Rowling to pull out a bit of her hair, in order to claim ownership of Harry Potter and Co. So, no, I don't own this, nor am I making any money off of it. And neither do I have any money worth suing over (though I'll freely give you my student loans if you insist on having **_**something).**_

**Reviews are appreciated – though obviously not required – even if it's just to tell me that you think this whole story is a ridiculous idea. (I'm not convinced it's not.)**


	2. Chapter 2

**My apologies that this chapter is so long in coming. I never intended on staying away so long, time just got away from me. But I promise I'm not abandoning this piece!**

A long moment stretched between them as Severus stared Hermione down, seeming to debate something before eventually giving a curt nod of his head and moving to pull off his robes, leaving him standing in black trousers and a white shirt. He moved to pull a brown apron off the hook on the wall and put it on, a challenge in his eyes daring her to say anything about the apron. She hid her smile, turning to the wedging table instead to cut a block of clay for him.

"Since it's your first time, I'll give you a pound and a quarter of clay to start with. When you advance further you can try larger amounts, depending on what you want to make. You'll need a bat, they're in the cupboard over there." He headed in the direction she nodded her head and she could practically see him trying to puzzle out what she meant by 'bat' when he opened the cupboard door, as there were obviously no baseball bats and no furry, nocturnal animals hanging inside it. Eventually, he guessed correctly and pulled out the round wooden board he would need to put over the wheel head.

He fit the bat on before taking a seat at the stool Hermione had previously been sitting on, then proceeded to unbutton and roll up his sleeves. He grabbed the small sponge out of the murky, clay-colored water in the bucket, wrung it out and then proceeded to wet the bat just as she had shown him before.

Hermione, eager to see how her first attempt at teaching this art form to someone new would go, pulled up the stool Severus had sat on earlier and handed him the ball of clay. For a brief moment of insanity, she stared at his bared forearms, noting not so much the Dark Mark that had faded drastically after Voldemort's demise, but rather the muscles that lay under the skin. It was more skin than she had ever seen bared before by her former Potions professor and while she hadn't given it much thought before, it was suddenly very clear to her how very much of a man he was. She mentally shook her head and averted her attention to the problem at hand, silently thanking the gods that he hadn't noticed her wayward attention.

"Slap it down hard in the center so it sticks." She instructed, and watched as he did just that (perhaps a little too vehemently, for it splattered the clay out quite a bit). "Okay, good. Remember to wet your hands. Now you remember the proper placement?"

He set his hands, one over top the clay and another overlapping to the side, and then very nearly jerked away in surprise when she gently grabbed his hands to resituate them properly. Severus Snape was much more used to people keeping their distance and avoiding him altogether. This free handling of his body (even if it was just his hands) threw him off balance. But if she noticed, she didn't say anything, and once the initial shock wore off, he couldn't help but notice just how soft and petite her hands were.

"Okay, go for it. Just push in with the left hand and down with the right, pushing the clay into the center." Mentally shaking his head and pushing aside the strange direction his thoughts had taken, he set his foot on the paddle and set the wheel to spinning.

He let the clay run through his hands, steadfastly ignoring just how dirty they were getting as he pushed the clay into the center of the bat. A few minutes later, he stopped the wheel and smirked in triumph when the clay was neatly centered into a nice little mound and looking nearly just like Miss Granger's had earlier.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his childlike smugness and silently noted that he did seem to have some natural talent for working with clay, and apparently – rather surprisingly – a decent ability to take instruction. _Wonders never cease_, she thought sarcastically.

"Okay, that looks great. Now you can begin opening up the clay. Keep the wheel spinning at a slow pace and keep your left hand on the side of the clay to guide it while using your right thumb to open it up."

A short nod of his head was the only sign that he heard her as he focused intently on his piece and did as she instructed. Noticing the clay was getting dry, she grabbed the sponge out of the bucket and wrung it out over his hands while he pushed his thumb into the center of the clay. But before she had more than a moment's chance to instruct him differently, it was too late – he had pushed right through to the wooden bat. His scowl when he realized his error was simultaneously ferocious and hilarious to Hermione. She couldn't help the giggle that escaped and quickly bit her lip to stifle her amusement. But it was too late to hide it from him and he turned that same scowl upon her.

"I fail to see what you find so amusing, _Miss Granger_," he stated, with extra emphasis on her title as though he were flinging an insult at her.

But to his bemusement, she smiled at him and rolled her eyes, instead of cowering away in fear. Annoying little chit. How dare she laugh at him!

"Oh for heaven's sakes, it's not a big deal." She exclaimed. "I don't know how many flower pots I gave my mother because I made the same mistake a hundred times over. We'll just get you another ball of clay and you can start again."

She moved to go grab more clay but he stayed her with a hand on her arm. She looked back at him expectantly, resolutely ignoring both the warm sensation of his hand on her skin and the fact that she now had a handprint of clay on her arm.

"I do not wish to waste your resources," he stated simply and removed his hand abruptly as though shocked that it had dared to reach out and touch her without his permission.

She gave him a small, searching look before heading for the wedging table anyways. "You're not wasting it. The scraps are recyclable so you can use as much as you like. And besides, this is good practice for me."

"How so?" He inquired.

"Well, I've been doing this since I was nine but I've never really taught anyone how to throw a pot before so this gives me the chance to work out the kinks a bit before teaching my classes how to."

"I see." He stated succinctly. And then, hiding his curiosity behind a wall of sarcasm, "I was under the impression that most nine year old girls spent their time dressing up Barbie dolls and playing tea with their stuffed animals."

She didn't answer him right away. Instead, she walked back and handed him a new ball of clay before taking a scraper and removing the old clay from the bat. It wasn't until she sat down again and waited for him to start centering the clay that she answered him.

"I was never really like most other girls. I spent most of my time reading books and I think my grandpa worried that I didn't have a lot of friends. My parents worked all the time, so we spent a lot of time together. He's the one who taught me how to throw. We used to spend every Saturday together working in his studio until I came to Hogwarts. Then we just had the summers until he passed away the summer before my third year. I miss those Saturdays," she finished quietly.

Snape didn't know what to say. He wasn't usually the type of person to invite confidences and as such had no idea what the proper reaction was to her revelation. Suddenly feeling vastly out of his element, he decided to ignore the whole thing and focus solely on the clay in his hands.

As it were, he entirely missed her flush of embarrassment when she realized she had overshared and come to the conclusion that Snape obviously had no interest in listening to her recount her pathetic childhood woes anyways.

Infusing her voice with an almost-too-bright cheeriness, she instructed him through the centering and opening processes again, silently cheering when he managed the last part without bottoming out the clay again.

"Okay, next we're going to work on bringing up the walls. Use your left hand to brace the clay inside, while you use the first two fingers of your right hand to bring up the wall on the outside." She again maneuvered his hands into the correct positions, but at least this time it didn't come as such a shock and he felt no inclination to pull away from the feel of her soft, warm hands. "The most important part here is to keep a steady pressure but be gentle so that the walls end up even all the way around. Be careful not to apply to much force though or you'll make the wall cave in or put a hole right through it." She pulled her hands away to let him work it out and sat back on her stool to watch.

"Sometimes this part is harder for men because they don't know their own strength." She flushed immediately after that statement, and then silently berated herself for doing so. It's not like she was making a comment on him in particular – though of course, what woman wouldn't notice his strength, especially after getting her first glimpse of him without his billowing robes on. It didn't take a genius to figure out that all that black cloth and buttons were hiding a well-toned body. Her flush deepened as she realized the direction her thoughts had taken once again and left her to wonder when she had suddenly become so focused on physical attributes of the opposite gender. Perhaps it had been too long since her last date. As it were, she could barely remember when her last date was (though she didn't have any trouble remembering how much of a fiasco it had turned out to be).

Caught up in all her ruminations, it took her a moment to realize that Severus was staring at her with an indecipherable look on his face. She bit her lip and glanced away, sincerely hoping that none of her previous unguarded thoughts had been openly displayed on her face for him to read. She pointedly studied the walls of the studio, and he turned back to his clay, his lips twitching in amusement at her fluster.

She collected herself and guided him through the last steps of the process until he had a nice cylindrical shape that could be turned into a mug later if he wished, and then showed him how to sever the piece from the board with a wire before setting it aside to dry.

She sent him to the sink to wash off while she gathered up the tools to be washed and cast a quick _Tergeo_ at the wheel to clean off the clay and water that had splattered. She dumped the tools into the sink to be washed later and then pulled off her apron as Severus did the same.

"If you have time tomorrow, you can come back and I'll show you how to trim once it's dried. You could put a handle on it if you wanted as well, and then you can glaze it before we put it in the kiln to be fired. Say four o'clock?"

He acquiesced to her request with a nod and headed for the door. But he didn't make it more than a few steps before she was calling him back.

"Wait! Hold out your hands." He turned to face her, his eyebrow quirked at the odd request. "Oh just do it already! It's not like I'm planning on cutting them off or something," she proclaimed with a roll of her eyes. His lips twitched slightly, in what she could almost swear would have been a laugh, before he obediently held out his hands to her, palms up. She cast a quick charm on them, one that he surprisingly didn't recognize.

"What was that?" He asked suspiciously.

"A moisturizing charm. I invented it myself. Working with clay will really dry out your skin. I used to go through a bottle of lotion every few weeks in the summer, but the charm works so much better. Not to mention it's quite cost effective."

He gave her an appraising sort of look, before nodding his head once in goodbye and strolling out the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**Once again I apologize that this update is so long in coming. My life went a little haywire, I got laid off, moved 1432 miles (I googled it) across the country, and am now looking for a new job and a new place to live in a different city than the one I'm currently in. But in the meantime, I was starting to feel super guilty about not updating, so here we go. And one last thing, my special thanks to wingsrookie and BuzzCat for their reviews on the last chapter. Any and all reviews are very appreciated!**

Though he'd never admit it out loud, Severus Snape was intrigued by this whole new side of one Miss Hermione Granger. It had been nearly four years since he'd last seen her before she'd taken up the position at Hogwarts. His last memory of her was barely more than a hazy, pain-induced recollection of seeing her in the hospital wing after the final battle. He vaguely recalled yelling at her to leave him alone when he'd awoken to her sniveling at his bedside, blathering on over how wrong they'd all been about him. He couldn't stomach the sight then any more than he could tolerate the memory in the present moment. He didn't want their pity and he definitely didn't want pity from the Gryffindor Princess. He viciously pushed the thought from his head and poured himself a glass of whisky, wondering how four years could feel like an eternity and a blink of an eye in the same moment.

The next day, after downing one of his own special brews he kept on hand for hangovers, he forced himself out of his rooms and up to the Great Hall for breakfast. The staff meeting after breakfast would be barely tolerable as it were without a splitting headache thrown into the mix. He slid into his usual seat, nodded a quick hello to Minerva on his left and reached for the platter of sausages. On his right, the Granger girl slid into her seat – the one beside him that she'd been delegated to as the newest member of the staff because no one else wanted to sit by the unsociable Potions Master – and reached for the pot of coffee.

"Morning," she greeted him quietly. He glanced in her direction, simply intending on returning the greeting, but was caught off guard by the sight of her clay speckled clothes and a streak of that same clay across her cheek. He said nothing, merely raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry.

She looked down at her jeans and shirt, smiling ruefully. "I know, I'm a right mess. I just wanted to get some pieces thrown this morning before the staff meeting so that I can have them ready to show the students when classes start on Monday. Plus I'd rather not run the kiln without a full load, so I figured I'd make a few different pieces to give the students some ideas for inspiration."

"How about a demonstration?" Flitwick's high-pitched voice squeaked from the other side of Hermione. "After all the charms work it took to get that room ready, I'm rather eager to see what it was all for."

"I have to admit I'm rather interested myself, Hermione." Minerva's voice cut across the conversation at the high table, and suddenly Hermione found herself the sole focus of everyone at the table. "How about after lunch once we've got the staff meeting out of the way? Then anyone that wants to watch can do so."

Hermione nodded in acquiescence and was glad when everyone's attention reverted back to their own conversations. She hardly doubted there were very many on staff who would be interested in such a muggle exploit but perhaps it was the novelty of the idea.

The meeting that morning – Hermione's first staff meeting ever – turned out to be little more than a tedious debate over patrolling schedules and minor curriculum changes. She would have been bored straight into a catatonic state in the overcrowded and overheated staff room if not for the commanding presence of Severus next to her and his constant stream of vitriolic remarks in response to some of the less-than-sensible ideas being offered up by other staff members. One such scathing remark in which he adamantly refused Pomona's request to allow a sixth-year Hufflepuff boy into the advanced Potions class after barely scraping by with an Acceptable in his Potions OWL left Hermione in a fit of giggles that she had tried and failed to disguise as a cough. Only when he turned his vicious glare on herself was she able to regain control. Though to be fair, she wasn't the only one finding amusement at his apt comparison of the gangly, mediocre-at-best Hufflepuff boy to her own eternally-awkward classmate, Neville Longbottom. Granted, Neville had come a long way in respectability after the role he played in the final battle at Hogwarts, but that couldn't quite erase 5 long years' worth of memories of near-misses and barely-averted catastrophic destruction in their Potions lessons.

At any rate, the meeting finally ended and the majority of the staff traipsed back down to the Great Hall for a leisurely lunch. Hermione quickly scarfed down a few bites of her sandwich, steadfastly ignoring Severus' look of disapproval at her poor table manners, and rushed out of the hall down to the dungeons. She was hardly prepared for an impromptu demonstration and wanted to put her best foot forward as the newest member of staff in front of the professors that had known her since she was nothing more than bushy hair and clumsy feet. (Granted, she still had her clumsy moments, but she'd come a long way in hair care since she was eleven.)

Once she'd reached her clay studio (at a near run), she quickly uncovered the pieces she'd left drying under plastic sheets that morning so the others could see a few examples of her work, and then rushed to pull some of her completed pieces out of Tupperware containers she'd stashed in a corner. She unwrapped a few of her nicer pieces and set them on a table for display, then gathered together her tools for throwing. She'd just moved to the wedging table to cut a block of clay when the first few members of staff started wandering in.

"Hi. You can come on in and have a look around if you want while I get the wheel set up." Nearly the entirety of the staff seemed to be coming to watch, leaving Hermione with the suspicion that Minerva must have insisted they show support to the newest member of staff or else surely only a handful would have shown up. It wasn't hard to figure out which ones were there involuntarily either. All she had to do was look for the expressions of disdain for a diversion so entirely muggle on the faces of those hanging just barely in the doorway. On the other hand, some members of staff – Pomona in particular – were in raptures over her completed pieces. It was gratifying to hear someone appreciate the time and effort that she had put into making each piece, and even more so when she realized that Severus was one of the few looking over her work. Not that he was in raptures, just his usual unreadable self, but still at least he was looking, right? Though why it should matter to her at all was beyond her reasoning capabilities. Firmly telling herself to stop obsessing, she cut a four pound block of clay – enough to make a large vase – and headed for the wheel. She opted for stoneware clay instead of the earthenware she had been working with earlier. Truth be told, she much preferred stoneware, but had purchased a large amount of the earthenware because it would be easier for her students to start learning to throw with.

She sat down at the wheel and slapped the clay down hard onto it, effectively drawing the attention of her entire audience so that she could begin. Having done so, she immediately regretted it for the nerves that began to kick in. She'd never had to throw in front of so many people before and she would look an utter fool if she messed this up. Resolving on ignoring the crowd, she focused on her piece and would've worked in silence, but for the hundred and ten questions Pomona insisted she answer. She was gratefully surprised when Severus curtly insisted Pomona let her work in peace and save the questions for later.

Somewhere about half an hour later she looked up from her finished vase to discover that two thirds of her audience had disbursed. Unable to muster up the wherewithal to be offended by it, she was simply pleased for the oohing and aahing over her finished piece that stood around a foot and a half tall. It was always nice when someone appreciated her craft, even if she couldn't help looking at her work and knowing there were things she could've done better about it. But then again, beauty is often found in the imperfections of life, right?

Once the staff had gone, she set to cleaning up, only to shriek in shock as she turned around to find Severus standing directly behind her. He quickly took a step back, putting space between them where there had been none previously.

"Professor Sn– er – Severus!" His amused look left her blushing like the schoolgirl she still felt herself to be at rare moments. "I didn't know you'd stayed."

"Obviously." He drawled, leaving her in no doubt of the inanity of the statement she'd just made.

"Er… what can I do for you?" She asked, wondering why he'd stayed. "Did you want to work on your piece now, rather than waiting for later?"

Instead of answering, he reached into one of the pockets of his voluminous robes and pulled out an apple, holding it out to her. "You had little more than a rat's share of lunch and nothing more than coffee for breakfast. I thought you might be hungry."

Hermione tried and failed to hide her look of shock. "You brought me something to eat?" The simple lift of one eyebrow served as a reminder to not ask stupid questions. Unable to reconcile this thoughtful man with the one she had known her whole adolescence, she simply took the apple with a quick thank you and set to devouring it as he left the room. He was right; she _was_ rather hungry after all.


End file.
